HDTV Best Image Resolution

rjm1717 wrote on 10/5/2006, 12:55 PM
I have been using Vegas for video and photo DVDs. Up until now I been using the software for making DVDs to be played back on Standard Def TVs and have had good results. Can anyone tell me what has been their experience for getting the best results for playback on HDTVs? Intuitively, the photo resolution should be higher. What rendering option is best?

Thanks in advance

Comments

fwtep wrote on 10/5/2006, 1:31 PM
What format will you be outputting on?
rjm1717 wrote on 10/5/2006, 2:41 PM
DVD-R
john-beale wrote on 10/5/2006, 5:18 PM
I think no matter what display it is connected to, the maximum resolution possible from playback of a DVD-R in a normal DVD player is 720x480 pixels (NTSC mode) or 720x576 (PAL mode).

There may be specialized DVD players that will play JPEG files from DVD-R media at higher res, but I don't know about them. My Yamakawa DV-218 will play raw JPEGs and simple MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files (without authoring) from a DVD, but only at normal SDTV resolution.

Before there were any consumer DVD burners, some enthusiasts made "mini-DVDs" burned on CD-R, and there were a few DVD players that could play this as a DVD (as well as most/all PC drives). Maybe a similar thing is now occurring, eg. playback of HD-DVD filesystems from plain DVD-R (?)
rjm1717 wrote on 10/5/2006, 5:45 PM
Thanks very much. I appreciate your help.
riredale wrote on 10/5/2006, 8:07 PM
Keep in mind that there are two ways to show 16:9 on a wide-screen TV:

(1) Edit and author in 16:9. This means that a single DVD image frame will be comprised of 720 pixels horizontally by 480 pixels vertically, and on a widescreen TV the pixels will be stretched appropriately to fill a 16:9 frame. This is as good as it currently gets for DVDs.

(2) Author for 4:3 displays. This means that the 16:9 image will be comprised of 720 pixels horizontally but only 360 pixels vertically (the rest of the vertical space will be black bars top and bottom). On a 16:9 display, you will have to zoom the image to fill the frame.

Obviously solution #1 is the better one, since you are getting better vertical resolution. I am surprised, however, that occasionally I will come across a professionally-authored Hollywood DVD that uses the latter technique.

Hopefully I got this straight--I get confused by these things easily...